Ground swell

A group of young sailors glide across sparkling blue water in this 1939 painting by Edward Hopper. Their small boat leans with the breeze while a buoy bobs nearby, tugged by the rolling waves that give the work its name. Everyone aboard seems to look toward that buoy, frozen in a hushed pause even as the sea rises and falls around them. Hopper, one of America's most cherished realist painters, had a knack for scenes that appear calm at first glance but hum with a quiet undercurrent of tension.

The date carries a certain weight. Hopper wrapped up this canvas in the summer of 1939, just weeks before World War II erupted across Europe, and some viewers read the swelling waves and the watchful, faraway mood as a mirror of the anxiety creeping over the globe. Then again, Hopper was a passionate sailor who spent summers on Cape Cod, so he may have simply been enjoying a fine afternoon on the water. Whatever he intended, the crisp blues and the sweeping open sky make this one of his brightest and most restful seaside pictures, even with that faint sense of movement stirring below the surface.